INT204: International Security

  The Intervention of the Sabine Women ,  Jacques-Louis David Courtesy : The J. Paul Getty Museum  Ken booth in his article “ Reflections of a Fallen Realist ” sets out to encounter the question of his self-perception, and its dialectical relationship with evolution of his study as an IR scholar and theorizer of strategy studies. The attempt is made to know how, contrary to conventional realist assumption, the concrete and more so “real” changes taking place “out there” in the international arena are contingent on one happening “in here”; inside the subjectivity of the individual pursuing and theorizing the given world.  Booth’s academic career starts from the positivist lineage wherein “seeing is believing” and the emphasis is on the sustained and uninterrupted empirical observation of a phenomenon. Yet, the contents of the experience must be constrained and orderly in certain ways, and these ways are determined not by what is given to the senses but by the self-activity of our under

Conventional strategies and practices of military and warfare, and all the implying rules and regulations attached thereto, do not fit well in the greatly evolving domain of cyber threats. Although the government's role in this realm is important, it still does not have firm control over it. The non-government affiliated agencies, groups and various other actors are taking the central role in the previously existing stages of the war. The changing dynamics of the referent with the changes in threat object makes the cyber realm a conundrum. It has apparently become hard to distinguish whether the role of a state is to protect individuals from cyber security threats arising from unidentified locations and unrecognized sources or to exploit and harm people. If the securitizing actor itself becomes the oppressor, then who else is going to protect individuals against it? The voices of individuals and certain sections of people would fill this gap. For instance, an unidentified hacker gr

The world is now focused on what Russian President Putin’s next move can be, with tens of thousands of Russian troops changing their status from being stationed on the borders of Ukraine to having invaded Ukraine. In what is being called a ‘Military Operation’ by the Russian side, it is very evident to the people elsewhere around the world that it is a full-fledged war to claim Ukraine. Russia has been very clear in their ambitions with the states that were earlier part of the USSR, like Ukraine, Georgia, Belarus, Latvia, Estonia and many more. Putin has been very clear in the case of Ukraine that the nation was and is a part of the Russian state and has wavered off with influence from the west. The Ukrainian population and culture are also actually very similar to that of Russia’s. Many Russians actually believe they are the same people divided by a border. However, Ukraine has its own identity, language, flag and many more factors that make it distinct from that of Russia. A majo

Women have always participated in war in one way or the other. Be it opposing wars by forming women-only groups, being spies for the state, or engaging in violence, women have done it all. More often than not, women have been the biggest victims of such political violence. Feminists must reconcile their opposition to masculine militarization with their acceptance of women's diverse roles and gender displacement in militarised initiatives. Source: Military.com Personal experience has always been an explicit feature of feminist theorising. Making sense of one's own life has been seen as a way of making sense of the lives of others. The personal, the political, and the international are a seamless web. In this chapter I want to make some reflections, in a similar spirit, about self, profession and world politics. Instead of purporting to describe or explain the world `out there', as is one's professional training, I want to reflect on the world `in here'—as `

 The dehumanizing of women’s bodies: During a crisis                  Operating in this society as a woman exposes me to countless insecurities which revolve around my physiological being. There will always be a looming threat and the fear of an existential threat for me as a woman, in this society due to the patriarchally manufactured hierarchy that exists. When I was growing up, I constantly had to think about the limitations and restrictions that were placed on me. For instance, something as simple as deciding what to wear became almost a household decision. From censoring what I wanted to say, from being told to sit in a certain way, from being a “good girl” I somewhere felt the hardships that lay ahead of me.  Being an IR student, I was introduced to various theories and its theorist giving their perspectives on feminism and security issues, etc. Furthermore, we were also introduced to Ken Booth in the class. In his book Security and Self Reflections of a Fallen Realist, he looks

Even as a highly empathetic person, providing any kind of space for ‘empathy’ as an emotion to co-exist with the issues that I came across, studied or even analyzed as a student of international relations seemed to be counterintuitive. And to an extent it can be justified as Booth mentions, that IR isn’t necessarily a field which is self-reflective. Mainstream knowledge production in IR is dominated by a very masculine hegemonic narrative (power politics and self help which is largely and ironically ‘fear-driven’- also an emotion underpinning the narrative of power ) which is surely very important to first enter into and understanding of the security predicament in particular; but as Booth says, isn’t enough to get us out of it. I realized that while a statist approach is useful to understand international security, focusing solely on that particular lens restricts the way I view and approach the issue (which is in a sense a social construction). Once this awareness set in motion, my r